A Little Thing Called WAIT

West African International Time (WAIT). Oohhhh, the infamous acronym that every volunteer in Burkina knows about, relates to, and most of the time hates. Ironically, the letters spell out something we do a lot of—this would be waiting. A LOT. This includes waiting for meetings to start, waiting for people to show up that never actually do, etc. The previous volunteer at my site taught my unofficial counterpart (he knows a small bit of English) and ever since him and I joke about this idea because this acronym pretty much defines my life, and every other volunteers, in Burkina. Often times when Ganga is informing me of a meeting that is to take place the following day at the CSPS (local clinic) or the time that he will be by my house the next morning, I will have to ask him: “now are we on WAIT or are we on American time?” He chuckles and responds with one or the other. Now, if he says WAIT, I can expect the meeting or his arrival to start anywhere between 2 hours to 4 hours late. Sometimes, he just doesn’t show up at all. If he says American time, he knows I want him to arrive on time but what ends up usually happening is that he will show up anywhere between 45 minutes to 2 hours late. One time I was leaving my house with Ganga to go have a meeting with the chief of the village and I told my host dad I would be back right away. Ganga then told me I probably should not have said that because the chief was a big talker and could keep you there for what seems like forever. Upon hearing this, I told Ganga: “Ganga, this is Burkina. Right away can mean 3 hours.” He laughs and then nods his head in accordance and tells me I am quite right. Ganga, a couple other health agents, and myself attended an AIDS conference in Koupela back in February. The conference was supposed to have started at 8:30 and at 8:32 Ganga points to his watch and informs me that we haven’t started on time and ask how much longer we would have to wait. While we may laugh about this a lot of the time, when one’s life is defined by this concept, it may become aggravating at times especially when Ganga will say he will be at my house to go start a sensibilization at 7 o’clock and 10/11 o’clock will roll around and he still is not there. So I wait, and I wait, and oh yeah, I happen to wait some more. It sometimes is frustrating because you don’t want to just sit in your house all days if you have other things to do. Sometimes I just say, ^%$@ it, I’ll just leave my house and do what I want to do and he can come find mean. I mean my village is small and lets be honest here it’s not that difficult to find the Nasarra (me, the whitey). Everyone knows what I am doing and where I am. When I first arrived to site, the only piece of furniture I had in my house was my lipico (a loose term for the word bed). It took a full three months to get my two counterparts to talk to and have the carpenter make the rest of my furniture. With this said, while meetings/projects are scheduled for one week and don’t end up actually happening until two months later, they do get done…eventually. When there are times I get frustrated and question how I can be an effective volunteer here when it may seem like there is no motivation from the community/they don’t care about getting things done, I simply just tell myself the project will get done, just not always on my time. When it comes to meetings at the CSPS, I usually will arrive at least an hour late, still be the first one there by at least a good 30-45 minutes. During this time, I usually will bring a good book with me to read and sometimes I will lie out on the concrete benches in the waiting room and take a nap. I am not really sure why the Burkinabe cannot show up on time; it’s not like they are stuck in traffic. The only things going down the dirt road are a few donkey carts and a few bicyclists. Patience and Flexibility: the two concepts the Peace Corps told us we would need to learn to have and embrace to be an effective volunteer here. I know these well.